Written by Tamta Bezhanishvili and Luka Danelia
Mar 1, 2026
Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s announcement about suspending EU accession negotiations until 2028 marked a turning point for Georgian civil society. After the announcement on 28 November 2024, Georgia erupted in continuous protests, and now, it has been more than 400 days since citizens have taken to the streets to denounce Georgian Dream’s (GD) pro-Russian foreign policy, violence against peaceful demonstrators, widespread injustice, and to demand new free and fair elections. GD’s struggle to suppress dissent through violent crackdowns, implementing authoritarian-leaning laws, such as the so-called “Foreign Agents Law,” sentencing innocent demonstrators, spreading massive disinformation and propaganda about the European leaders, and dismissing pro-European officials from the ministries claimed to be inefficient. Despite all of the mechanisms aiming to consolidate autocracy and weaken resilience, the Georgian people managed to maintain solidarity and persistence against the government. With this in mind, the question is: What exactly unites Georgians, and why has GD turned out to be vulnerable to continuous demonstrations?
Roots of Solidarity
For centuries, Georgians have seen themselves as part of Europe. In recent decades, the country has worked hard to present itself as a European nation rather than simply the heart of the South Caucasus. Being considered as a European nation is not just about geographic dimension, but rather it is a matter of common ideas, culture, values, and identity that unite Georgians and encourage them to do their utmost in order to ensure this way of development. Former Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania’s historic announcement in the Council of Europe in 1999 – “I am Georgian, therefore I am European” – continues to resonate deeply in the minds of Georgians today.
Collective memory shapes a common identity, which is one of the key factors stimulating Georgians’ motivation to be politically active citizens and resist the pro-Russian orientation of the Georgian Dream Party. Solidarity is a response to GD’s massive violence and injustice toward peaceful demonstrators. Every time it uses violent means to silence people, more and more people come out.
When emphasizing the role of collective memory and identity in fueling protests, symbols are essential. Over the past 400 days, Georgians have expressed their protest in diverse ways – from performing national dances and organizing marches representing different professions and regions, to forming long human chains along the streets. This sustained movement has drawn people of all ages, genders, and social backgrounds. What is particularly noteworthy is that Georgia’s younger generation has been especially active in today’s pro-European protests, behaving as though they had personally endured the traumas of Russian aggression, even though many were too young at the time.
Georgia’s aspiration toward Europe has been driven less by realpolitik or pragmatic calculation, but rather by shared European identity, values, and ideals. This historic choice of value rationality has not only strengthened the legitimacy of Georgia’s civilizational choice to seek membership in the European Union but also has mobilized broad public support for EU integration. According to the research conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in 2017, 82% of the Georgian population favors the country’s accession to the EU.
Given this context, Georgians realize the urgency of unity and solidarity. GD’s current geopolitical trajectory will lead the country to being pulled back into the Russian sphere of influence. GD’s emerging foreign policy of multi-alignment will result in losing self-autonomy and could leave the country isolated from the West and exposed to Russian pressure. Therefore, Georgians perceive evolving changes as an existential crisis and push hard to solve it.
The nature of the demand plays a significant role in maintaining the protest for so long. Considering that Georgian people see the problem not merely as a local issue, such as corruption, nepotism, or unreasonable budgeting, but instead they realize the necessity of changing the political regime as a whole, they are strongly encouraged to take to the streets despite the violence and threats used by the government. The fact that GD poses a threat to the safety and health of the people itself, which became even more obvious after the BBC research being published, GD lost its political legitimacy, which had already been damaged after falsifying 2024 parliamentary elections, and made people choose between striving for the governmental change and giving up to it, rather simply trying to convince the government in accepting the public demand. The BBC’s latest research, revealing GD’s unreasonable and disproportionate violence against peaceful demonstrators, and overall portraying the current regime as a threat to the people and the country’s future development, shows who is politically as well as morally on the right side. However, exactly that nature of the problem again explains why the protest has not achieved its goal yet. While it is easier for governments to make compromises on local issues, such as, for instance, unreasonable budgeting in Bulgaria, regime change is comparatively difficult to achieve.
Alongside using symbols and creative forms of protest, which made demonstrations not only memorable and noticeable for international society and the national population but also attractive and inclusive, their peaceful nature, ensuring that the protest was legitimate, and focus on the deliberation (one of the illustrative examples is the Georgian Public Assembly) significantly contributed to the maintenance of the protest. Deliberation enables raising people’s awareness about the political events taking place in the country, draws their attention, and encourages them to actively contribute to the discussion about potential solutions to the problem. The inclusiveness of the protest ensures that it is massive and effective.
It is very fascinating to see how Georgians have developed such strong solidarity with one another. Considering the country’s history – particularly the pervasive apathy that characterized the Soviet era – the current level of empathy and mutual support among compatriots is a striking shift. That total apathy of the Soviet time was a survival mechanism against a state that punished social trust. Controversially, after every violent crackdown involving the detention or beating of demonstrators, the response of modern Georgian society has been unexpected: even more people take to the streets. They are seen actively resisting arrests of fellow protesters, filming instances of violence, and calling on special forces to stop the brutality and join the people’s side. However, this solidarity actually comes from the collective memory of the soviet period. Georgians remember the 9th April rally, which began initially for freedom and independence, ending with the ‘Tbilisi massacre’, carried out by the Soviet forces, resulting in bloodshed, the deaths of 21 people (most of them very young), and left hundreds injured. Additionally, the massive 1978 demonstrations to protect the Georgian language from being replaced by Russian in the constitution stand as a testament to this spirit. These rallies serve as powerful examples of Georgian unity, a quality rooted deeply in the people’s social psyche. They have become a lesson (kind of a playbook) for each and every Georgian on how to fight for freedom and independence, the values that Georgians inherently cherish. Notably, Generation Z, which led the first waves of recent protests, is a generation raised on the examples of the April 9th heroes and the leadership of figures like Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Merab Kostava (in the 80/90s). Collectively, this history demonstrates a profound societal and political resistance to Soviet-style tyranny.
However, unlike 1989 or the Rose Revolution of 2003, which were led by specific political figures, the 2024–2025 movement has been largely leaderless and decentralised. This “distributed mode” makes the movement resilient; there is no single “head” for the government to cut off, and the movement is fueled by decentralised networks of students, academics, tech workers, and medical professionals. The creation of citizen-funded legal and medical aid groups to pay the massive fines (sometimes ten times the average monthly salary) represents a level of civic maturity rarely seen in transitional democracies.
Despite significant solidarity and resistance, the protests have yet to produce tangible results. Several factors explain this outcome. First, these demonstrations are unprecedented in Georgia’s modern history; never before have the streets been occupied for such a duration, nor has a movement been so entirely organised and led by ordinary citizens. While being “leaderless” is viewed as a strength by a polarised public – particularly those wary of traditional political figures – it also functions as a weakness, as it can lead to strategic disorientation. In contrast, the 2023 rallies against the “Foreign Agent” law managed to force the parliament to withdraw the legislation. Those protests featured clear leadership from civil society, media organisations, and political actors, unified under a singular, concise slogan: “No to the Russian Law.” The current movement, sparked by the Prime Minister’s November 28th statement, lacks a similarly unified demand. While the overarching purpose is to defend Georgia’s European aspirations, there is no specific, easily articulated “ask” for the government. Furthermore, the focus has shifted toward demands for new elections based on allegations of voting irregularities prior to November 28th. By pivoting from the immediate constitutional crisis to broader grievances regarding electoral integrity, the movement may have further disoriented its base and diluted its primary message.
Secondly, the current unrest did not emerge in a vacuum on November 28, 2024; it is the continuation of a cycle that began in 2022, when Georgians took to the streets in solidarity with Ukraine and, months later, to resist the “Foreign Agents” law. The fact that citizens have been mobilising for three consecutive years has proven physically and emotionally draining. This exhaustion is particularly severe for those who had never participated in rallies before, yet became the driving force behind this movement. For Generation Z, in particular, who have a university to handle, freedom to feel, and spare time to spend, these protracted demonstrations have become gruelling, and the sustained pressure of constant activism, while courageous, has tested the endurance of a generation trying to navigate their youth alongside a national crisis.
Notably, a lot of domestic political, economic, or legislative pressure, more specifically, inadequately massive fines, arrests, and outlawing wearing masks or standing on the pavement, which often result in detainment, have played a role in weakening participation in rallies. While violent crackdowns have been a trigger for the mobilisation, these political or juridical means made it very risky for the Georgian population to still come out and protest as the fines are difficult to pay for the majority of people who suffer from financial problems; arrests are real, having tangible examples thereof and, notably, no political party or leader have power to protect these people from it.
Furthermore, the Georgian opposition disproportionately focused on raising international concern rather than consolidating domestic support. While the opposition remains marginalised and lacks a broad electoral base, the ruling Georgian Dream party has effectively controlled local dynamics. Although GD has faced significant setbacks in the international arena, it has successfully amplified its narratives at home, simultaneously sowing public fear and securing its own support base. The opposition did achieve unprecedented success in mobilising international pressure – notably from the EU and the US – which resulted in sanctions against GD officials and the introduction of the MEGOBARI Act in the US Congress. However, these developments underscore a strategic miscalculation: international pressure alone cannot substitute for domestic political momentum.
Conclusion
For both sides, too much is at stake, and neither is likely to compromise. Georgian society will not give up its identity, Western values, and prosperous future as part of the European Union to which it historically belongs. Nor will the Georgian Dream party risk its current stance and will devotedly strive to maintain power. With this in mind, massive mobilization of the protest, continuous pressure from the West, and the process of taking the system down from within, in which we mean the continuance of the current increase in distrust between the GD officials, arresting them for political interests, and as a result weakening the system internally and simultaneously exposing its real face to the public, will determine the future of the protest. In order to mobilise massive resilience, it is essential to reach the people living in the regions and remote parts of Georgia, many of whom suffer from the negative influence of government propaganda. With this in mind, questioning GD’s political legitimacy is substantial. Legitimacy is the source of power, and that is why the ruling party strives to maintain pseudo-legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate through massive disinformation. However, recent political developments make it obvious that GD poses a serious threat to people’s safety. Therefore, the protest will continue in spite of all the crackdowns coming from the ruling party and will not stop until it reaches its aim.